FTP is 40 years old - E-learning is older
Yesterday, FTP (the still popular file transfer protocol) had its 40th birthday (via Slashdot).
Now, server-based e-learning systems are older than that! Read the excellent Plato article on Wikipedia. By the mid-seventies, it had most of the components a modern LMS has. I also could argue that it had stuff that we still don't have in a typical e-learning platform. Of the course, the interface wasn't the same, but all the ideas were there.
Finally, for people who believe that virtual communities are a new idea: In 1968,Licklider &Taylor (PDF) argued that “ What will on-line interactive communities be like?" ...In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest...”
Believe me, everything in education takes at least 40 years to make it into the mainstream, iff everything works nicely. Most ideas need between 50 and 100 years, i.e. between two and four generations ..... In computing, things move much faster, I'd say the typical diffusion of innovation into mainstream takes between 15 and 30 years.
